Living in the Past: A Family History

I learned this morning that the church that has figured most strongly in my family history, Christ Evangelical Lutheran of Ozone Park, New York, will be closing its doors as of May 24th.  The church has been struggling for a few years now, and they have decided to combine its small congregation with two others, in the hope of creating a church that will be reinvigorated and will thrive. This article  from a local paper explains the story.  But I stopped at one sentence and wondered, is this really true?  Rev. Herbst from the New York Synod said this:         But Herbst said the physical building has very little impact on the faith of a congregation.         "It's not about the building, it's about how we're serving the community," he said. In one sense, I guess he's right -- that whether services are held in a historic building or in a storefront wouldn't affect the faith of the people who attend.  But in another way, it i...

I've been on a little hiatus for the past couple of weeks, as that thing called "real life" interfered with my desire to post on the blog.  But I'm back and will be posting regularly, I hope!  I've got work to do before the Genealogy Jamboree at the beginning of June!

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings asks us to answer five questions this week: 1)   Do you (or your parents) have any memorabilia from when you were a baby? (ie. baby book, lock of hair, first shoes etc.)   2)  Do you know if you were named after anyone? 3)  And do you know of any other names your parents might have named you?   4)  What is your earliest memory? 5)  Did your parent/s (or older siblings) read, sing or tell stories to you? Do you remember any of these?     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1)  I have pictures (quite a few), some teeth (yuck) and a pony tail that was chopped off.  Tied with a blue ribbon. 2)  I was named after Miss Rheingold (beer) of 1949.  Her name was Elise Gammon, and my mother thought she was so pretty and her name was so pretty.  What interests me is that she had never heard the name before, but when I go back through my ancestry, I do find women named Elise. 3)  If I had been a boy, they would have ...